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FTM 101: Foundations of Finance & Capital Markets
Course Code FTM 101
Course Name Foundations of Finance & Capital Markets
Department Finance
Semester Offered Odd (Term 1)
Tuition Hours 30 hours
Course Level Foundational
Pre-requisite -
Co-requisite QMA 101, CFS 101, TFS 101
Course Objective Finance is about how money moves, who controls it, and why it flows the way it does. Before you can invest, trade, or build a fintech product, you need to understand the plumbing of the system.

This course introduces students to the real architecture of financial systems: money creation, banking, credit, capital markets, and the instruments that connect savers to borrowers. India serves as a living laboratory where digital infrastructure, regulation, and scale collide.

By the end of this course, students should stop seeing finance as tickers and charts, and start seeing it as a system of incentives, flows, and constraints that shape economies and opportunities.
Course Philosophy This course emphasizes
  • Systems thinking over memorizing instruments
  • Understanding flows of money before valuation of assets
  • Real-world observation before theoretical abstraction
You will not start with “what is a stock.” You will start with why a stock exists in the first place. Every concept is tied back to how money actually moves in the real world.
Course Learning Outcomes Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
  • Explain how money is created, distributed, and regulated within an economy.
  • Understand the structure of financial systems, including banks, capital markets, and shadow finance.
  • Differentiate between major financial instruments such as equities, bonds, currencies, and commodities.
  • Analyze how capital flows across markets and how macro forces influence these flows.
  • Interpret the role of institutions like RBI and SEBI in shaping financial markets.
  • Think in terms of incentives and constraints, not just products, when analyzing financial systems.
Course Author Sagar Udasi
MSc Statistics and Data Science with Computational Finance from The University of Edinburgh.
Contact: sagar.l.udasi@gmail.com
Course Organiser TBD
No. Lecture Title Concepts Covered Lecture Objective
01 Where Does Money Even Come From? Evolution of money, barter to fiat, role of trust Build first-principles understanding of money so students stop treating it as given and start questioning its design.
02 Banks Don’t Just Store Money. They Create It Fractional reserve banking, credit creation, balance sheets Understand how banks expand money supply and why credit drives economic growth. Critical for fintech capstone context.
03 The Invisible Network Moving Your Money Payment systems, UPI, clearing and settlement Connect theory to India’s infrastructure. Helps students design realistic fintech products in capstone.
04 Why Do Financial Systems Exist At All? Role of intermediaries, transaction costs, information asymmetry Frame finance as a solution to real problems, not just institutions and products.
05 Stocks Are Not Lottery Tickets Equity basics, ownership, IPOs, stock exchanges Ground students in what equity really represents before they ever “invest.”
06 Debt: The Most Important Contract in Finance Bonds, interest rates, yield, credit risk Introduce lending as the backbone of finance and link to future credit and portfolio courses.
07 Interest Rates Control Everything Time value of money, discounting, compounding Build intuition for valuation and capital allocation decisions.
08 Who Decides Interest Rates? Central banks, RBI policy tools, inflation targeting Help students connect macro policy to everyday financial outcomes.
09 Markets Are Not Random. They Are Incentive Machines Market participants, incentives, behavior Train students to think in incentives rather than price movements.
10 The Currency Game Nobody Talks About FX markets, exchange rates, capital flows Introduce global dimension of finance early. Useful for later international exposure.
11 Commodities: The Real Economy Behind Finance Commodity markets, supply chains, pricing dynamics Connect financial markets to physical economy, especially relevant for global terms.
12 How Capital Actually Flows Across the World Capital allocation, FDI, FII, global liquidity Build macro intuition required for investment thinking in Term 2.
13 Financial Institutions: Who Holds Power? Banks, NBFCs, mutual funds, insurance firms Map the ecosystem students will interact with in capstone partnerships.
14 Regulation: Why You Can’t Just Build Anything RBI, SEBI, compliance basics Ground students in constraints while building fintech products.
15 When Financial Systems Break Case studies of crises (India and global) Show failure modes so students design more robust systems.
16 Reading the Financial News Like a Pro Interpreting economic signals, news vs noise Build ability to filter information and think independently.
17 From Theory to Capstone: Mapping Opportunities Identify gaps in financial inclusion and fintech Direct bridge into CAPSTONE 101 ideation and execution.
18 Building a Financial Product That Actually Works Product-market fit in finance, trust, distribution Help students translate knowledge into usable fintech products.
19 What Most Finance Students Get Completely Wrong Common misconceptions, mental models Reset flawed thinking early before it compounds.
20 The System You Now See Everywhere Integration of all concepts Ensure students can connect money, markets, institutions, and incentives as one system.
Component Weightage
Weekly Quizzes (Concept Checks) 20%
Applied Assignments (3 total) 30%
Capstone Integration Report 20%
Final Written Examination (2 hours) 30%
Type Resource Provider
Lecture Financial Markets Prof. Robert Shiller (Yale University)
Lecture Introduction to Banking and Finance Coursera / University of Pennsylvania
Reading The Ascent of Money Niall Ferguson
Reading Money, Banking and Financial Markets Frederic Mishkin
Reading RBI Annual Reports & Publications Reserve Bank of India